For Texas fans who watched Jonathon Brooks take over the Longhorns backfield in 2023, the latest news out of Carolina lands with a familiar ache.
The Panthers officially placed the former Texas running back on injured reserve Wednesday due to a groin injury that will require core-muscle surgery, a move that will keep him out at least four games and likely closer to six weeks.
Carolina filled the roster spot by promoting safety Isaiah Simmons and adding linebacker Maema Njongmeta to the practice squad. The transaction is routine NFL housekeeping. The player at the center of it is not.
Brooks is still only 23, a Hallettsville product who waited his turn behind Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson before exploding as Texas’s featured back. In 2023, he rushed for 1,139 yards and 10 touchdowns, added 25 catches, and earned second-team All-Big 12 honors.
He piled up six 100-yard games, including 218 yards against Kansas, and looked like the next Longhorn tailback ready for the NFL. Then, in the fourth quarter of a November win at TCU, he tore the ACL in his right knee.
He still made a ceremonial appearance in the Big 12 title game, but the season that had defined him was over.
Carolina drafted him 46th overall in 2024, the first running back off the board that year, and signed him to a four-year deal worth about $8.4 million. The same right knee betrayed him again after just three NFL games.
The Panthers shut him down for all of 2025. This fall he finally returned, appearing in two games with nine carries for 30 yards and two catches for 43 yards before the core issue forced another stop.
It is not an ACL this time, which is something, but it is another interruption in a career that has never been allowed to settle.
From a Longhorns vantage point, Brooks’s story has always been about what he did when the lights finally found him. He was not the most hyped back in Austin when he arrived.
He became the most productive one on the roster once the jobs opened. Steve Sarkisian called him an invaluable leader after the 2023 injury, and that reputation followed him to Charlotte even as the medical file grew thicker.
Texas fans who remember the burst through the Kansas defense or the two-score night at TCU still see that player. The NFL has seen flashes and then long stretches of rehab.
Injured reserve is not a career verdict. A six-week window is shorter than the two ACL recoveries already behind him. For a back who waited behind stars at Texas and then waited through two knee reconstructions as a pro, the latest setback is another test of the same patience that defined his college rise.
Carolina will keep working out veterans and shuffling the depth chart. In Austin, the interest is simpler: whether the kid from Hallettsville gets another clean stretch to show what that 2023 season promised.
